Tank tops are my wardrobe must-have, especially now that I am working from home a lot. You can wear them to the gym. You can wear them over a swimming cozzie. You can wear them with shorts. You can wear them with cropped pants. You can dress them up with a shirt over the-top or dress them down by layering them. They work for work, working-out, playing, relaxing at home, and vacationing. Put quite simply, they are FAAABULOUSLY versatile. And at $6 each, fabulously cheap too.
= $12!!!
So, I just got back from lunch, having spent 35 minutes choosing between polka-dots and stripes, browns, greys, and pastel blues. I spent $88 on tank tops. (Ok, so I threw 3 pairs of socks and t-shirt in there too but that's still a lot of tops.)
Driving back to work, feeling very proud of myself (what savings!) my cell phone rang. The number was blocked, so I figured it was my work voicemail paging me and answered it.
"Can I speak with a... " (pause to check the name on the call-sheet)
Here, I have to fess-up to being pretty horrible to telemarketers. As a sales person, you'd think I'd have more respect, but honestly the majority of them are robots and rude to-boot, so I can't muster-up much in the way of patience for them. Usually, I try to find a way to put the phone down on them before they get a chance to launch into their carefully rehearsed script. Hey, I know time is money and they shouldn't waste their time on me because I aint gonna give them any money.
Back to the blow-by-blow.
"Can I ask who's calling?" I say, planning to use this as a way to extricate myself from the conversation by claiming not to be me, and for "me" not to be available right now.
"This is Bob
Ok, maybe not a telemarketer per-se but still someone wanting money I can't afford to spare.
This usually would have been my cue to say "I'm sorry, she's not available right now," but for some reason I instinctively hung up the phone without a further word.
For one light and two stop signs I didn't think much about it, but then niggly little thoughts started creeping up from my conscience. As my friend, Elena, would say I was sensing a lack of alignment somewhere. It was like I'd made a weird move and my hip had clicked out of joint - I needed to do some wiggling around to figure out how to pop it back in. (The hip reference may seem random but I actually do have a bum hip that needs surgery. It clicks in and out all the time.)
"First, you have a walk-in wardrobe full of clothes," the little voice inside my head was saying "and you just spent $88 on more tank tops."
"Second, you are a democrat who is always bemoaning the state of affairs whenever Republicans are at the helm."
"Third, you spent a good 20 minutes writing a comment on your friend Elena's blog yesterday about personal and collective responsibility."
Can you see where this is heading?
If I choose to spend $88 on tank tops I don't need, then I must have at least $20 to give to the election campaign of one of the most promising and inspirational politicians in America since JFK. And if I don't, then I have no right to moan about "my guys" being bullied by right wing lunatics. Equally, I could take back 4 tops without any consequence to my ability to get through the summer, and give $20 (or more) to, if not Barack directly, the DNC or some other organization which is in alignment with my political or social ideals.
Which is what I intend to do.
* OR * 
2 comments:
Awesome. And you saved yourself some irritating comment from moi. ;-) I'm inspired. I'm not ready to donate to Barak Obama, but I'll definitely be doing something for Planned Parenthood. And maybe Barak, too, what the hell.
About your bum hip. Having undergone total hip replacement in my right hip just last December, I have embarked on a personal crusade to inform the world about some choices patients have when it comes to hip surgery. You may know this already, but if not, here's what I want to share: If you are scheduled for hip surgery, be sure ask the surgeon if the incision will be in the front or back. If accesses to the hip is done though an incision in the front of the joint, and not to the rear, recovery will be faster, and less painful. The traditional way to replace a hip is to cut through muscles in the butt. Cut muscles take longer to heal are more painful during recovery and you may not be able to take up kick boxing or certain yoga poses for fear of dislocating the replaced hip joint. When my hip was replaced, the incision was done in the front of the joint, the muscles were clamped aside, hip replaced and popped back into the joint, clamps released and skin stitched in 1 hour. I was up walking with a walker in less than 24 hours, walking with crutches 12 hours after that and using a single crutch less than 48 hours after surgery. I walked without support in 10 days! I am not restricted from any activity. While my intention was to heal like a 20 yr. old, (I was 57 at the time) my recovery was normal for that surgical technique. Had the muscles been cut, I'd have been using a walker for 3 weeks and on some form of support for 3 months. My surgeon told me this frontal approach has been done in France for 30 years and only recetnly approved in this country. I believe even hip resurfacing (top of the femur is sanded smooth but nothing replaced) can be done with this frontal incision. It's just a lot easier to recover from muscles pulled aside than cut muscles.
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